Google's sister company, Sidewalk Labs, has partnered with every level of government to build the first-ever 'smart city' in Toronto — but with several high-profile resignations and mounting privacy concerns, will this project ever break ground?

Reporter Amanda Roth (The Logic) has spent the last eight months investigating Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto's 'smart city' plan, and has broken story after story on the tech giant's project.

David Skok is the editor-in-chief of The Logic, a new media start-up reporting on the innovation economy. He speaks with Amanda about the timeline of her reporting, how to responsibly cover big tech, and why people should be concerned by more than just potential privacy issues when it comes to this partnership.

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This episode is brought to you by Second City, Audible, and FreshBooks.

Despite mounting human rights violations and the seemingly state-sanctioned murder of a journalist, Canada continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. Plus, how are municipal elections in Canada supposed to compete with period pieces?

Episode 2 is online now, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thunder Bay. The highest homicide and hate crime rates in the country. A mayor charged with extortion. A police chief who went to trial for obstruction of justice. Nine tragic deaths of Indigenous teenagers.

Next week, recreational weed will become legal across Canada. In anticipation, mainstream media has begun taking cannabis coverage seriously. Overnight, nearly every major outlet across the country has hired full-time reporters to cover it — but before we celebrate industry growth, how sustainable is this beat?

Guest host Manisha Krishnan is joined by Financial Post's cannabis reporter, Vanmala Subramaniam and Grasslands founder Ricardo Baca — America's first weed editor, who co-led the now-defunct The Cannabist (The Denver Post's weed journalism vertical) — to discuss why journalists should cover weed like every other industry, their strangest reporting experiences, and their criticisms of cannabis coverage so far.

Guest Host Sheila Heti(Motherhood, How Should a Person Be?) speaks with fellow "autofiction" author Rachel Cusk(A Life's Work, Aftermath, et al). The Giller-nominated writers discuss receiving harsh criticism, why memoir is a dead end, and how Cusk is reimagining the novel, and making art and meaning out of mid-life crisis and divorce with her critically-acclaimed trilogy (dubbed a "literary experiment").